to special people pretending not to be

this is mainly structured as a rant after having this conversation over and over again, and I like how it ends, but I can also only meet so many people, so maybe this hits a note with some people. there’s a lot more I could’ve done to clean this up, but I needed to hit my writing deadline, so here it is.

now-a-days when i meet ex-founder waterloo/stanford junior who started smt over the summer and is interning at a vc or startup or google apm and thinking about their own thing or exploring for the summer at some hacker house… i’ve just started opening with “do you think you’re special / chosen?”

and the exchange almost every single time goes like

Me: do you think you’re special

Them: wdymean by that?

Me: you know - like chosen for something better?

Them: I mean everyone’s special in their own way right?

Me: ok sometimes i meet people who pretend they don’t know what i’m talking about when they knew exactly what i’m talking about when they were 10. when you were 10 and started noticing that you were smarter than all the other kids in class and started reading books about famous people like marie curie or genghis khan and thought to yourself “wow i’m really special that’s just like me” and

then you turned 16 or smt and took a social studies class that drilled into you the idea of determinism and how everyone’s just a product of their circumstances so you’re not entitled to anything special and something something veil of ignorance so you should pretend like you’re like everyone else and participation trophies make everyone else not feel left out so it’s ok. but something started nagging at the back of your head because you knew that wasn’t true… and you feel materially better, and it’s not just a social construct… but you just swallow that feeling…

until now, you’re like 21 or smt, and you’ve gone through 3 years at a good school where you look around you and realize… wait, no, maybe I am better. i am better - but that voice is getting drowned out by the “social responsibility” bullshit that’s been crammed down your throat for 3 years in college but that’s your true voice. and now you think you gotta start a company while simultaneously claiming that we’re all actually the same or some shit - but your actions show that you are obviously aware you are special, and you’re not like everyone else, and you were always faster, and better, and smarter… but more importantly… you like it. you like and feel pride in your strength and superiority, but you cringe at the word superiority because you’ve been made to feel guilty for it. as if you recognize that you’re taller is the thing that’s making others shorter - as opposed to a truth about the world. … do you relate to that

Them: lol fuck god fucking dammit ok yea i get it i relate to that….. [long pause, obligatory pandering] maybe yea i do think i was chosen to be something better

ok… so what? “congrats or i’m sorry, not read all that”

so stop doing it. stop pretending you don’t know what unique means anymore.

try to figure out if you have IT (obviously don’t ask what IT is, you know) - and then behave accordingly. maybe you don’t have it, but that’s ok. you can live a happy life w/o it, a better life than one where you deluded yourself into believing you do have it. maybe you do have it - that’s cool! live accordingly.

this isn’t a moral statement. this isn’t a moral statement. this isn’t a moral statement. this isn’t a moral statement. this isn’t a moral statement.

having it doesn’t make you ethically superior.

but it means you can do more for the world. talent and agency aren’t uniformly distributed among the population. to pretend like it is just holds back those who should be on the frontiers - and causes them to spend a whole life aspiring for mediocrity and repressing the voice in the back of their had that knows… deep down… you are special.

and the response is some variant of “wdymean by that” or “define chosen” bc we’re all trained to deliver the script that pretends like we didn’t have the same universal experience when we were younger, but my response